Page 5 of Sobek’s Joy

“A statement of fact.” Sobek pinched the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to think through the howling in his head that kept insisting he needed to get closer, needed to touch, needed to claim. “The boy is a crocodile shifter. Extremely rare, virtually extinct, actually. The other two are…”

“Stop.” Rudy’s free hand came up, and he actually covered Timothy’s ear with his palm. The hatchling’s other ear was already pressed against Rudy’s chest. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I’m going to ask you very nicely to leave. Right now.”

Every instinct Sobek possessed screamed at him to stay. His crocodile side was practically crawling under his skin, desperate to shift, to prove what he was, to make this impossibly bright creature understand. The territorial urge to guard Rudy - and by extension, the children - made his scales itch beneath human skin.

But Rudy looked genuinely upset, and the hatchling had started to whimper.

“I apologize.” The words tasted wrong. Sobek never apologized, not for anything, and he wasn’t wrong, but clearly he’d misspoken. “I shouldn’t have…that was poorly done.”

“Yeah. It was.” Rudy’s expression softened slightly, though he still held Timothy close. “Look, I get it. The kids are different. They’ve got their quirks. But they’re kids, okay? They’re not shifters or paranormals or whatever else you want to call them. They’re just children who’ve had a rough start, and they don’t need some random guy showing up to…”

“I understand.” Sobek took another step back, even though it felt like someone had wrapped barbed wire around his lungs and was pulling tight. “I won’t mention it again.”

He should leave, just walk away. He could drive back to the cabin and then send his car back into the ether, and translocate somewhere else entirely - maybe Fiji, maybe Antarctica. Basically, anywhere Rudy’s scent wouldn’t follow him into his dreams. But his feet refused to move, and Rudy was still standing there glowing like someone had threaded gold through his veins, and that’s without the hatchling who was watching him with eyes far too knowing for a child that age.

“Would you like some coffee?” Rudy asked suddenly.

Sobek’s brain ground to a halt. “Excuse me, what?”

“Coffee.” Rudy shifted Timothy to his other hip. The protective tension had drained from his shoulders, replaced by something that looked suspiciously like pity. “You look like you could use some, and I feel bad about yelling at you. You did bring Timothy back twice now, even if you did just insult my kids.”

“I didn’t mean to insult…” Sobek cut himself off and drew in a long breath. His crocodile side rumbled as he caught a hint of something that definitely wasn’t paint fumes and could only be Rudy’s unique scent. “Coffee would be...acceptable. By the way, my name is Sobek.” It was probably polite to offer his name at the very least.

“Nice to meet you, Sobek.” Rudy’s smile lit up his entire face, and Sobek had to physically stop himself from stepping forward. “Come on in. Fair warning, the house is a disaster because I’m painting, and Rose is somewhere wearing only underwear and a tiara, and Jack is probably reading in the closet because that’s his favorite place for some reason.”

The house was exactly as messy as advertised. Sobek followed Rudy through a hallway painted in alternating stripes of purple and green, past a living room where furniture sat covered in paint-splattered drop cloths, and into a kitchen so aggressively yellow it made his eyes water. Rose - the panther cub - was perched on top of the refrigerator in nothing but pink underwear and a plastic crown. She hissed at him, then went back to eating what looked like an entire box of crackers.

“Down,” Rudy said mildly, setting Timothy in a chair at the kitchen table. “We eat at the table, not on appliances.”

“I’m a bird,” Rose announced.

“Well, birds don’t eat crackers from a box. Get down, now.”

She climbed down with a dramatic sigh that would’ve done any theater actress proud, then proceeded to drag her box of crackers to the table. Jack appeared from somewhere - possibly the closet, based on Rudy’s earlier comment - with a book tucked under one arm and suspicious amounts of brown fur poking out from under his sleeves.

Shifter pups, Sobek’s crocodile side insisted. Pack. Ours.

They’re not ours, Sobek told it firmly. Their guardian is our mate, but…

MATE. OURS. PROTECT.

Fantastic. His crocodile side had apparently regressed to caveman logic, which meant he wasn’t going to listen to anything Sobek said for at least another hundred years.

“How do you take your coffee?” Rudy asked, already pulling mugs from a cabinet painted in a shade of blue that clashed magnificently with the yellow walls.

“Black.”

“Boring, but easy to make. As I said, we don’t judge here.” Rudy poured two cups, doctored his own with what looked like half a bottle of cream and enough sugar to put a horse into a diabetic coma, then slid Sobek’s mug across the table. “So. Are you renting the cabin next door?”

“For the month.” Sobek wrapped both hands around the mug, using the heat to ground himself. The three children watched him with varying degrees of suspicion and curiosity. Timothy had stopped whimpering, but his scales were visible on his forearms - thin lines of green-gray that any shifter would recognize instantly. “It was meant to be a quiet retreat.”

“Ah.” Rudy’s expression turned sheepish. “And then my kids kept invading your pond.”

“Repeatedly.”

“I really am sorry about that.” Rudy took a sip of his absurdly sweet coffee, leaving a small foam mustache on his upper lip that he didn’t seem to notice. Sobek noticed. “They’re usually good about staying in the yard, but something about that pond just calls to them. Especially Timothy.”

Because he’s a crocodile shifter, Sobek wanted to say. Because I’m a crocodile god, and hatchlings are drawn to powerful crocodilians for protection. Because his instincts recognize me as safe.